24/06/2026

LYFE WEDNESDAY | JUNE 24, 2026

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World’s youngest fashion runway designer

A T four years old, Max Alexander told his parents he was a dressmaker. By age 10, he was showing a collection at Paris Fashion Week. Alexander is the world’s youngest fashion runway designer, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. He created garments for Denver Fashion Week in 2023 at age seven and showed a 15-look women’s collection at the Palais Garnier in Paris in March. This weekend, he will attend the debut of a documentary about his life at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Alexander said he cannot pinpoint what led him to pursue a design career at such a young age. He said he enjoys producing fashion because he can express his creativity in various ways. “You could use any fabric, any material. “You can make a dress out of pickles. You can make a dress out of spoons. You can make a dress out of hangers. It’s, like, crazy,” he said in an interview at his studio in his Los Angeles home. o 10-year-old Max Alexander describes show in Paris as ‘very fun’

‘V’ shortage hits sales of German football team shirts FOOTBALL fans seeking to purchase German national team shirts online with the names Kai Havertz, Alexander Pavlovic or Deniz Undav have been unable to do so because of a shortage of the letter “V” for jersey printing, reported German news agency dpa. Sports goods makers Adidas recently confirmed a report from the Bild paper but expect the bottleneck to be ended soon. “Due to high demand for flocks featuring the players Undav, Havertz and Pavlovic, there were some short-term supply issues with the letter V. “Working with our partner 11 teamsports, we were able to resolve this quickly, so flocks featuring the letter V will soon be available to order online again,” an Adidas spokesperson said. Selling shirts is big business for companies such as Adidas around the current World Cup. Adidas equips 14 of the 48 teams at the event in the US, Mexico and Canada and said its overall World Cup turnover is around €1 billion (RM4.7 billion). Adidas said the blue German away shirt is selling surprisingly well, with sales rising sharply after the German squad nomination on May 21 and the June 11 World Cup start. The company said the away kits with a retro vibe are selling so well that there was also short supply in some sizes for the shirts of Belgium, Japan and Curacao. In Germany, the shirts are sold in two quality versions for €100 or €150. – Bernama-dpa Adidas says the blue German away shirt is selling surprisingly well. – PIC FROM GERMAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION A leather bag made from Tyrannosaurus rex cells failed to sell recently, the Paris auction house Drouot said, commenting bids were well below expected. Auctioneers Giquello had touted the “one-of a-kind” piece to sell for more than US$500,000 (RM2 million) but bids barely broke the US$150,000 mark, said the Drouot house where the sale took place. Unveiled in the spring in Amsterdam, the bag was created from traces of collagen from the femur of a T-Rex found in the US state of Montana 25 years ago. “In recent years, we’ve developed techniques – biotechnologies that allow us to instruct a cell culture to produce, so to speak, genuine T-Rex skin in the laboratory,” Iacopo Briano, a

Alexander poses for a picture in his studio at his parents’ home in Los Angeles, California.

coffee bean sacks? “After 10 years, you can put them in the ground and they biodegrade. It helps our planet too,” he said. Alexander described his show in Paris and his walk down the runway to applause as “very fun”. “It wasn’t scary for me. I was like, oh, like all these people appreciate me and I should be happy,” he said. Alexander’s designs for dresses, pajamas, tees, hoodies and more are sold on a namesake website. There are collections for men, women and children. At the time of the interview, he was designing an outfit he could wear to see the Broadway musical Hamilton in New York. Alexander explained his design process in steps he called “the dress cycle”. “Think. Drape. Sew. Done! Voila!” he said. In between choosing fabrics, draping mannequins and figuring out how to work with models, Alexander has the normal concerns of someone who has just finished fourth grade. For one, recess and lunch periods will be shorter in fifth grade. “It sounds harder. I think it’s worse because we only have 10-minute recesses but we used to have 25, which is kind of sad,” he said. – Reuters

The young designer said he receives inspiration from the environment around him and always looks for sustainable materials. “Like coffee bean bags. My mom is a coffee lover, so I was like, why not make a dress out of

Alexander works at his sewing machine. – PICS FROM REUTERS

First leather bag made from T-Rex cells fails to sell at auction as bids fall short

palaeontology expert associated with the sale, recently told AFP. He noted the material differs from vegan leather, which is mostly made from plastic. “In this case, it’s derived from a cell culture, so it’s 100% skin. And at the same time, it comes from an animal that went extinct 67 million years ago!” he said. With no precedent to go on, Alexandre Giquello, whose auction house is organising the sale, explained they had to “come up with a price” that would reflect the amount of investment required to create the bag and its rarity. Giquello estimated the value at between €300,000 and €500,000 (RM1.4 million to RM2.3 million).

The bag is estimated to be worth between RM1.4 million and RM2.3 million. – AFPPIC